Sole Survivors
by dragynflygrl
Summary: When Sam carries his brother out of the gate, Hell’s army cowering behind him, the only things not burned are Dean’s feet. Angst all 'round. Not deathfic. Oneshot.


**A/N: **Those of you waiting on an update for Give It Away, it'll probably be up tomorrow. I wonder who Dean's got locked in the bathroom. But my plotty muse has put herself in the corner and refuses to come out. My muse that says, 'screw plot, let's tell a story,' has come out for the day. Hope everyone likes.

Disclaimer: No profit being made. No defamation of character or malintent. Pure fiction.

Summary: Errrm...Brothers and shoes come in pairs. _Don't walk ahead of me; I may not follow. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead..._

Warning: Switching POVs. Each section is self-contained. oOo indicates new section and possible new POV. I know! 'tis taboo! I be such a bad girl. -pouts-

**Sole Survivors**

_You and Me, we've seen everything to see, ... And the soles of your shoes, are all worn down. The time for sleep is now. Nothing to cry about... __**"I'll Follow You into the Dark"--Death Cab For Cutie**_

John buys him the first pair, with Mary's prodding. Granted, it doesn't take much. There's no way John Winchester, wielder of wrenches, could justify the expense. But Daddy Winchester doesn't need justification. He'd do anything for his son.

"Oh, honey, they're just like yours," Mary squeals, her eyes crinkled with glee. "I can't believe they make them so small."

John had said the same thing the first time he'd looked into Dean's eyes.

"I can't believe they cost that much," he fronts. He picks up the tiny boots and shakes them then pulls the tongues out as far as they'll go before peering inside.

"What are you looking for?" Mary asks. She lifts baby Dean up to shoulder level and turns him toward John, bounces him in her arms. "What's Daddy looking for, huh? What's he looking for in your shoes?"

"I'm looking for the key to the meat locker where I can find the rest of the cow. For that price there'd better at least be a ribeye with my name on it." He feigns indignation and tamps the little shoes on Dean's tummy. "What ya think, Dean-o? You don't need boots like Daddy's, do you?"

Dean promptly spits up all over the boots.

"Oh...Oh, honey," Mary gasps, wiping at the mess with the corner of the receiving blanket.

Dean grins, toothless, with little stringers between his gums.

"Oh sure, laugh," John teases. "You just cost Daddy half a day's pay. I think this store has a 'you puke on it, you bought it' policy."

Lucky for John, they do, because the shoes were coming home with them anyway. This way, he keeps his honor intact.

oOo

Dean's wearing the shoes every day when John comes home from the garage. They both have a greasy thumbprint on the tops by the end of the first week.

He wears the shoes to Grandma and Grandpa Winchester's for Easter. Grandma kisses each one and leaves some red lipstick on the tongues. (She calls it lipstick. Grandpa calls it warpaint.) Grandpa dribbles tobacco juice out the pouch in his bottom lip and onto the strings. Uncle Barry gets his whiskers caught in the tiny metal lace-keepers, and accidentally spills beer out of his longneck when he yelps and pulls back.

Dean's wearing the shoes when he goes to the doctor for his shots and fights so hard he kicks the doctor in the face and gives him a bloody nose.

Mary cries when he outgrows them. What're a few tears on top of everything else?

oOo

Dean's not wearing any shoes at all when he runs from the house with Sammy in his arms, Daddy yelling behind him, and Mommy too quiet ever since she screamed and woke him up.

Sammy's crying, and Dean doesn't know what to do. Daddy said to get out of the house, not what to do after. He can't look at the fire, so he pulls Sammy close against him and just stares at his bare toes in the grass until Daddy's boots run up and he's lifted off the cold ground into warm arms.

For a long time after that, all Dean sees are feet.

Firemen's feet with yellow boots. Relatives in black shoes with mud on them, because it's raining at the cemetery. There are fewer and fewer of those, and then it's just Daddy's boots again. Twenty years later, he'll remember only having met most of them the once and will only recall their voices and their shoes. Aunt Carrie will always be alligator skin boots.

oOo

Daddy doesn't look the same after standing next to Aunt Carrie in her alligator skin and Cousin Fred in his penny loafers. His whiskers are longer. His shirts are dirtier, and he smells funny.

His boots don't change much.

When he starts coming home with blood on his shoes, Dean takes them from the side of the chair where Daddy always falls asleep with one off and one still on, and puts them outside the door. He makes sure not to disturb the salt line when he does.

oOo

Dean watches his father flip through his wallet, fingers gnarled from long hours in the garage he's working at in town. Dad puts aside what Dean knows to be the room rent, and then runs his hand through his hair with a sigh. Dean can tell there's not enough left to pay a babysitter and buy medicine.

"It's probably just a cold," Dean offers.

"But he can't go to day care with a temperature, and I have to work today, Dean-o," Dad says. "Pastor Jim's out of town..."

"I can stay with him," Dean offers. He doesn't speak too loudly. His throat feels kind of funny today. "It's not like we do anything in the second grade, Dad."

He doesn't mention it's his day to read in front of the class.

Thinking about it makes his head hurt.

"You need to be in school, kiddo."

No, he really doesn't. Not today.

"How 'bout you, Dean-o? You feel okay? You look a little..."

"Look at me!"

Dean ducks out from under the heel of his Dad's hand pressed against his forehead, and they both look up as Sammy clomps into the room, wearing Dean's Spiderman Pajama top, boots, and jeans jacket. The shirt drapes all the way down to the top of Dean's boots, and the jacket sleeves hang limply off the ends of his arms like gorilla knuckles dragging on the floor.

"Look, at me, Dean. I'm you!" Sammy squeals. "I'm 'a go to school like you."

Sammy shuffles toward Dean, too-big boots dragging along the floor as he points his chin almost to the ceiling in order to see out from under the bill of Dean's baseball cap.

"He doesn't look that sick, Dad," Dean reasons. "If I stay home with him today, he'll probably be better by tomorrow. I can miss one day," he shrugs.

Shrugging makes his chest hurt.

Dad looks in his wallet one more time, and over at Sam who wipes his runny nose with the sleeve of Dean's jacket and grins at them both as though he doesn't have a snot bubble in his nostril. Finally, he nods and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder.

"You know I wouldn't ask you if there was any other way, right?"

"Sure, Dad. I know. We'll be fine."

"Okay. I'll make it up to you, kiddo."

oOo

The kid comes out of the motel room wearing what must be his big brother's boots. His big brother's everything else, too. Grace isn't really bothered by it.

She watches from the window of the motel lobby, a little worried when she sees him alone. He's not the first unattended child she's had in the parking lot, not even the youngest, (don't even get her started) but she can't remember ever seeing this one without his daddy or that big brother of his hovering over him.

He makes a beeline for the payphone on the corner. Lazy Dazy Motor Lodge is straight out of a Roger Miller song. No phone, no pool, no pets. She wonders if she should go and help him when he looks up at the phone an stretches but can't seem to reach. Kid can't be more than four. She's not sure he even knows how to dial.

Instead, she answers the desk phone. The pricks in 3 need more towels. Probably got drunk and pissed all over theirs. Wouldn't be the first time.

By the time she takes the call and leaves a message for Housekeeping, the kid's gone. He's back a second later with the trash can from their room. She chuckles to herself. Smart kid. Must be an important phone call. He loses one of the too-big boots when he steps up onto the can, makes his phone call, wiping at his face the whole time, little shoulders quaking under the layers of clothes, and hops down.

A little while later, that black car of his daddy's barrels up to the room, and the old man jumps out, leaving the door open and the engine running. He comes out a few minutes later with the older boy held tight against his chest, arms dangling limply at his sides.

The little boy climbs into the back seat with his brother, and they roar out of the parking lot before Grace can offer a hand. She finds the one boot still lying on the sidewalk next to the phone and leaves it outside the door.

She doesn't hear or see anything of the Winchester men again. They leave in the middle of the night. She knows they're gone when the little boot disappears from in front of the door. She has a feeling it has a long road ahead of it.

oOo

Sam can't feel his feet. Can't feel much else for that matter. Doesn't stop him from insisting, "I can walk, Dean. You're more cut up than I am."

"Maybe, but you're a total lightweight. Couple beers or a little blood loss and you go all pixies and fairy dust on me, Tinkerbell," Dean pants.

"D-not," Sam mumbles, leaning more heavily on Dean's shoulder as he does. Stupid legs are not helping him win this debate. Not that he stands a chance. Dad and Dean are always right, or so he's been told. This time, though, with the world painted red with the blood running in his eyes and the ground moving under his sneakers, Sam's inclined to just let Dean be right.

"Whoa there, big fella." Dean stumbles as Sam's legs buckle and send them both to their knees. "Almost to the car, little brother, and Dad's coming right behind us. Just help me out a little here."

Sam tries. He does. But somehow he ends up with his toes pointed backward leaving trails in the dirt, his gaze fixed on Dean's boots as his brother drags him the rest of the way. Fixed being a very loose term in this case. Either his eyes are swimming, or the rest of the world is.

The moonlight comes through the trees and reflects off the steel toes of Dean's boots where the leather has either worn away or been eaten off by the spit of one of the many acid-spitting, baddies they've taken out recently. The blood splattering on them is Dean's. Sam's not supposed to mention that.

"You need new shoes," Sam slurs.

Dean does need new shoes.

"So do you."

Huh. Dean's right. Sam wonders how he didn't know that.

Too busy saving the world to save themselves, as usual. Sam's sick of it. Sick to death if they're not careful.

oOo

There's nothing like the smell and squeak of new leather, and the room is filled with both. Neither is as bright as Dean's smile when he holds up the new boots Sam bought him for his birthday.

"Sammy?" Dean asks, incredulous. "How the hell did you afford these?"

Sam shrugs, waits for the answer to reveal itself. If he could say it, he would have when the letter came in the mail a week before Dean's birthday.

"You little shit," Dean teases, eyebrows waggling. "You used that fake I.D. I got you and one of Dad's credit cards, didn't you? Ha-ha! That's my boy, all growed up now," Dean beams. He slugs Sam in the shoulder before taking the boots out of the box. "Suppose now I'll have to take you out to get screwed, blued, and tattooed, eh?"

Sam's not going to touch that with a ten foot pole. One time walking into the men's room of a bar to accidentally catch a glimpse of Dean's boots under a stall door with an unfamiliar girl's one leg on the floor between them is enough.

Sam swallows hard as the envelope comes into view from inside the crumpled paper. Dean reaches for it, an expression on his face Sam can't quite pin down.

"What's this?" Dean asks. "You got a card? Dude, you're such a girl..."

His voice trails off as he reads the envelope. It's addressed to Sam, from the Office of the Registrar, Stanford University. Underneath, in Sam's scrawling hand, it says:

_Don't walk ahead of me; I may not follow. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead;_

_Dean...Walk beside me; Brothers and shoes belong in pairs._

Inside the envelope is Sam's acceptance letter and scholarship award.

Dean's wearing his new boots when he drives Sam to the bus station, but the smell of new leather is overpowered by the smell of stale beer and sex. Sam doesn't have to ask how Dean spent the night after he walked out. He's just glad Dean's there to say goodbye.

The next time Sam sees those boots, Jess is standing beside him, and there are way too many bloodstains on them for Sam's liking. Enough stains for the pair that weren't there. He's looking down at Dean's feet when he agrees to follow him back into the life he left behind.

oOo

The doctor tells him his brother's dying, then hands him a bag of Dean's personal effects. In it are the boots Sam gave him for his birthday before he left for school. The doctor doesn't expect he'll be needing them, prescribes rest, rest, more rest, and anything Dean needs to keep him comfortable. The bastard.

Dean's wearing those boots when Sam opens the door and finds him standing, well, _leaning precariously_, against the frame.

Sam's already convinced Dean to give the specialist in Nebraska a try when he notices the stench in the room. He's helping Dean take off his boots when he realizes the smell of burnt flesh actually is burnt flesh. Dean's flesh. Apparently steel toed shoes are better conductors of electricity than actual toes. All ten of Dean's little piggies have the arc burns to prove it.

Besides enlisting supernatural power to save his brother's life, Sam uses a fake credit card to buy Dean's next pair of boots. If he ever gets caught, it'll be the one charge he doesn't dispute.

oOo

When they wrap the body to put on the pyre, Sam's in charge of the feet. A split second before he pulls the sheet over his father's boots, he realizes they're the same brand as the boots he bought for Dean in Nebraska, identical right down to the tread, and a fist of ice pulls his spinal cord out through his scalp.

He tells himself it's not a vision, that the spots dancing before his eyes are just sparks flying out of the pyre and burning holes in his retinas. When he falls to his knees in the dying light of the fire, Dean's at his side in a second.

Sam throws up on his boots.

oOo

Dean disappears a day before the year is up on his contract. When Sam gets to the Hell Gate, he finds no signs of a struggle at all. No blood, no hell hound hair, no protective sigils painted on tombstones, just one boot track, a tread he knows too well, scorched onto baked mud in an otherwise soggy graveyard.

oOo

When Sam carries his brother out of the gate, Hell's army cowering behind him, the only things not burned are Dean's feet.

For a month, he doesn't leave Dean's bedside, is untiring in the application of creams and ointments, can't let Dean suffer more than he has to. After three weeks of deirium and nightmares, whimpers and screams in a voice Sam doesn't even recognize, Sam wonders if Dean living like this isn't more torture than dying in Hell. For the next week, his own tears pour over the broken skin, his determination and faith cracked over the shell of his brother.

When Dean finally opens his eyes, they're as hazel-green and love-bright as Sam remembers, the only part of Dean not broken.

_If there's even one working part..._

On that day, Sam leaves. He comes back an hour later with a box, takes the lid off so the room is heavy with the scent of new leather, and puts it on the table where Dean can see.

"You need new shoes," he says, a quiver in his voice. Brothers and shoes belong in pairs, and now that they're together, they've got a long, long way still to go.

"S-ss-o do you..."

Something breaks in Sam's throat, laughter or tears, he can't tell. Those would be Dean's first words. So Dean.

"One step ahead of you," Sam says. He kicks his foot up on the nightstand and pulls up his pant leg to reveal the same boots on his own feet. Dean blinks slowly and slides back into sleep. Sam leans forward, whispers in his ear. "Now get better so you can walk beside me where you belong."

It's a long road back, but he does, and then they do, the sole survivors.

The End

A/N: A couple of those little stories got out of hand. I could have gone on much longer with the hotel story. Haha. Anyone care to see one of those expanded?

ErK! Had the quote wrong. I think it's okay now...is hiding now.


End file.
